


Lensing

by boson-nihilist (knittedwithstars)



Category: Death Stranding (Video Games)
Genre: A doozy, Attempted Murder, Blood and Injury, Childhood Abuse, Fist Fights, Gen, Higgs was a queer kid, Sam/Higgs if you squint cause I can't help myself, Strangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:19:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25388926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/knittedwithstars/pseuds/boson-nihilist
Summary: It reverberates through his memories all the same.
Kudos: 14





	Lensing

_Boom._ The impact is dulled on his swollen nerves, like the reverberations of a distant explosion, but white hot pain still crackles at the base of his skull, splinters up through his brain and into his eye sockets. Something streams from his mouth as his neck whips, god knows if it’s blood or spit or bile or tar, and he sways. The subtle undercurrent of the dark waters below threatens to drag him under, drag him down for good. Forever. The thought is the only thing keeping his legs from buckling, makes him rattle his head and put his arms back up — but not that it matters. That’s where he’s headed, that’s where he’s going, that’s where he was always going to be.

He rights himself, peeks an eye open despite the pain, and the visage of Sam Porter swims before him. Bloodied to hell, exhausted, looking ridiculous in that getup, but fists clenched and teeth bared for another go-around. If he wasn’t the object of those fists, Higgs could be doubled-over wheezing. Who’d’ve thought. All that silence, all those unquestioning nods and neglected grimaces, coming out now in pure rage. No bark and all bite, that man who delivers. He’s heard glimpses of the curses under Sam’s breath, _‘you fucking people,’_ and has to wonder who Sam really sees as he swings — probably that asshole boss man. Maybe any number of the dipshits who smiled and thanked Sam for being such an inspiration, gushing about what a symbol he was for _‘rebuilding America’_ and keeping on keeping on, before handing him another run and using him up without a second thought. Hell, if he wasn’t the one getting the shit beat out of him for it, he might be cheering on this great act of justice. 

Anyhow, projected as Sam’s wrath may be, Higgs deserves it. Sam doesn’t know — the truth of the matter, Amelie’s intentions, Higgs’ role, and it wouldn’t really matter if he did. This was always how it was supposed to end between them. This is what Higgs deserves, and he’s known it. Still, he can’t help his instincts from kicking and screaming. The ache of bruises starting to bloom on his temple, the iron in his mouth, the rush in his ears, is setting off all sorts of dusty neural paths that make fear and frenzy pool in his belly. Amelie said it had to be a good fight, afterall, make it worth Sam’s time. So he spits and grapples, jabs and jeers and hisses — try as he might, it’s just sound and fury. He doesn’t have the weight. Chiralium poisoning and reckless use of the Beach have stripped the porter bulk from his bones. He’s just a stupid kid poking at a frothing dog loosed from its chain.

_Boom._ Too distracted admiring his opponent. The world spins. Black clouds, black sand, black water, swirling down down down toward an endless depth. He really stumbles this time, sky tilting into a wall — fingers swiftly curl into his collar to keep him upright, and it’s clear that it’s no act of altruism as he looks to Sam snarling and winding his fist back. Well, that’s it. Lights out, Sam’ll bloody his face to his dear heart’s content, then he’ll be discarded and quietly drown in the tar, slip beneath the waves. Game over; the end. If his face had any feeling left in it, he might smile.

It takes his battered brain a good moment to register that Sam isn’t moving. No, not quite — moving almost imperceptibly slow. Then that everything is. The chunks of earth and writhing whales and droplets spinning off Sam’s suit are suspended in glacial ascension, the rugged peaks and troughs of the tide stilled to crawling mountains. And despite the fire roiling through him, he can’t move either.

Before he can make heads or tails of it, a well of red flashes in his peripheral. And a voice culls the silence. 

“You were always weak.”

Every nerve in his body tenses. Ice climbs up his spine, creeps and cracks through his chest. All at once, confusion, dread, panic, and a pleading denial flood in the opened spaces. Everything remains still for a hung moment, then water ripples lap up his chilled thighs as something wades closer. Right behind him, at his neck for a breath, then staggers into his view. Higgs’ limbs are statuesque, but he still finds his voice in a hoarse whisper. 

“...Daddy?” 

He catches his eyes. Strained, suspicious, as alive with disgust and hatred as they ever were. A grizzled face twisted up with fear thinly veiled as righteousness, drawn lips that professed authority. Pulse under his throat, knuckles freshly bruised. A heatless hand clamps his shoulder, and he can’t jerk away.

“You think yourself a god? You think you can shape this world? Look at you.”

Higgs only stares at him. He looks just like the day he died. Some time ago he’d convinced himself that he’d forgotten his face, that he’d lost the memory of a man who’d got what he deserved. But he hadn’t, of course not. It was scorched into every childhood memory. It smeared over his nightmares. It’s standing right in front of him.

“I told you you’d never survive the outside. But you begged and begged and screamed for me to let you out. Took my life for it. For what? This?” 

The man releases his shoulder and draws seamlessly through the black ocean to take stance behind Sam. And Higgs’ brain has been too thoroughly fucked by the events of the past days to consider untangling the layers of reality playing before his eyes. Daddy’s apparition looks real enough to his stuttering heart. 

“Spent your whole life running away. All to end up back where you started.”

Higgs finally finds his breath, swallows and pulls his mouth tight. A disheveled semblance of reality sets in, that _Daddy_ is spitting words, glaring at him. Daddy. He still can’t move from Sam’s grip, but he can bare his teeth till the tendons in his neck ache.

_“Fuck you.”_

Daddy scoffs with raised brows, shakes his head. Daggers his eyes in the way that used to make him go scampering.  
“Twenty years, and that’s all you’ve got?”

Higgs struggles, all he can manage is twitching fingers but he’s poised to thrash the fucker the moment there’s a give.

“I’ve got nothing to say to you. You deserved it. You deserved to fucking rot. _And I’ll do it again. Swear to god, I’ll put you right back in the ground.”_

“Sure. Right after he knocks your lights out and you’re dead in the water.”

Daddy casts a long, loathing look at Sam, up and down with those critical eyes. Higgs hisses and fights harder. Get that man away from him.

“You were always good at taking punches, Peter, but shit at delivering them. Playing dirty’s always been your strong suit.”

Daddy steps forward. His image passes through Sam like nothing, creating an awful flickering amalgamation between the two that makes Higgs freeze again.

“Maybe you need a lil’ reminder.”

Daddy jerks his fist back. Before Higgs can brace himself, everything moves at once. A brief flash of the crumbling world, the low roar of an alien ocean, rumbling before it hits. It’s not bare knuckles that makes it feel like his nose cartilage is being shoved through his skull sideways and turns the world white, it’s thick padded gloves that’ll leave wire bruises under his skin and a much younger, prettier, kinder face. It reverberates through his memories all the same. The kitchen counter snaps against his back. He scrabbles his hands trying to grab anything he can, but Daddy finally closes the space between them with frenzy. Tears streaming and streaming, face like an overswollen tomato with juice leaking from the splitted seams. He grabs Higgs’ shoulders, Higgs tries to knee him back and wrestle loose but his thin frame was always dwarfed by the man. Daddy throws him to the ground like nothing. The breath knocks out of him and his left arm is crying, he looks up to Daddy’s shadow staining over the steel sky. He decides to give up then, he’s done, Daddy’s won. He drops his arms and just lays there trying to catch his breath — suddenly the shadow falls. A knee slams down on his chest. “D-Daddy!” he squeaks.

Sam’s breath-stirring close, regaining his footing, adjusting the grip on his collar. All his weight pitched forward, too assuming, completely off guard when Higgs lunges. His gasp is the last he takes before Higgs has his hands around his throat.

His palms fill the space seamlessly. All of Sam’s momentum is abandoned as he reels against Higgs’ pitch, back arching, stumbling and sputtering. Higgs’ height is more apparent than ever, he envelops him. He feels that he could easily snap Sam’s spine in half if he wanted. But what occupies him is the vision of Sam’s face slipping from rage and snarls to pure fear as he tries to both lurch out of Higgs’ grasp and hold up his own weight.

It contorts. Images rip and bleed, twist and shudder. Sam’s a man sobbing, screaming in his face, hands closed around Higgs’ neck and crushing him. Higgs chokes for breath, Sam chokes for breath and fingers desperately claw at their throat in attempts to dislodge the ruthless grip. He can feel blood well under his fingernails but the vice only tightens, so he takes a swipe at the face blotting out the ceiling — he gets his head slammed on the ground for it. Sam digs at the fevered bulge where his jaw is definitely fractured, blows a panicked hiss and clambers back to his neck when Higgs gives it a sharp jerk. Black is seeping into the edges.

A boy gasps beneath him. An older boy, with patches of stubble and a jawline starting to settle, but there’s much, much too much youth and ignorance in his eyes to be a man. Not much like the other boys either, those good sons. His eyeliner’s smeared over purpling cheeks and starting to melt at the edges of wide, tearing eyes. Painted nails scrape at Higgs’ arms, and they gouge bloody crescent moons into his skin but it only makes him squeeze tighter. _“What do you know of my fucking pain?”_ he hears himself scream in some distance. The boy’s eyes roll back, whole body spasming in every feeble effort to get Higgs off his chest, legs kicking and stomping. _“Stop,”_ the boy wheezes, as if there were any mercy left in Higgs’ intentions. 

There’s a mess of things clattered from the kitchen counter on the floor. He’s too focused on smothering the erratic pulse beneath his thumbs to notice the boy’s hands clutching at the ground for something, anything. He’d forgotten how lucky he was. The boy stiffens for the briefest moment, meets his eyes, then gives a last strangled yell and suddenly there’s blood gushing between Daddy’s fingers and the boy’s drenched with raining red.

Higgs’ nerves lapse. Sam yanks at his arms, and he lets go all at once, mind blank. He doesn’t really register the payment of thuds wavering through his head. All noise and darkness. When it stills he sees himself through Sam’s eyes. Daddy, standing through sheer unnatural force but dead, face gilded in chiralium, the face of a tyrant gone lax and quiet for the first time in its life. Sam grabs his blood-bathed shoulders and slams their heads together three times, blind spite, and down the titan goes.

The water swallows him up. Cold on his face, curling into every crevice, ready to crawl into his lungs to steal his breath one last time and deliver him to the great beyond — then, somehow, he’s being dragged back to shore, set down gently in the rocky sediment and all he can feel is the shaking of his hands.

**Author's Note:**

> Well.  
> Hopefully you've read Higgs' journals lol.  
> Come check me out at boson-nihilist on tumblr for more bullshit 😘 I hope to eventually post a longer multi-chapter Sam/Higgs story


End file.
